Obamacare is working already!

[mtngirl47]

You really shouldn't be blaming "Obamacare" for your premium increase. It is the private insurance companies (who also wrote most of the Obama's healthcare bill) that are raising rates only because they can, and it is the State legislatures that approve any insurance premium increase, not the Feds. State legislatures are easily bought off by the private insurance company lobbies.

The only provision that might affect the excessive profits of the insurance companies related to the new Health Care bill is the removal of the pre-existing condition FOR CHILDREN, beginning Sept. 23, 2010. Families with sick children should apparently just go bankrupt paying the medical bills for their children when the insurance companies refuse to insure them.

Pre-existing condition removal for adults does not go into effect until Jan. 1, 2014.

And in 2014, if the mandate survives, the insurance companies will have millions of healthy young adults paying premiums. This should decrease premiums for everyone as the healthy pool increases. Of course they will not decrease premiums without government regulation. And there is little in the bill that limits premiums. The Republicans made sure that was the case, including that turncoat Joe Lieberman.

The only way private insurance companies will limit premiums is if they have competition. But the public insurance option was killed in the bill. Thanks again, Republicans and Lieberman.

Health Insurance Companies Are Dramatically Increasing Premiums Due To The New Health Care Law And There Is Not Much We Can Do About It
August 20, 2010
http://inteldaily.com/2010/08/health...ance-premiums/

You are so right! Everyone should remember that some of the richest corporations in the world are Insurance companies.

Everyone should see the Frontline piece you linked:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...roundtheworld/
and you should see the Michael Moore documentary "Sicko" which will make you want to learn to speak French and move to France.

Employers want to reduce their costs...Remember when companies used to offer retirement plans? Then IRA's came along...and 401k's and fewer companies offered retirement plans. Same with health insurance. Not to mention the number of companies that are "outsourcing" and using contract employees to avoid payroll taxes, unemployment insurance, etc.

[Exployer1234]

When I lost my job I lost my insurance as well. I have had to pay everything out-of-pocket and it is not cheap. A normal doctor's visit is about 300 dollars. I have just signed up for my own insurance and it is going to cost me 350 dollars per month. That is just for me. I wouldn't mind paying 310 for a family of 4 versus what I am paying to just insure myself. My employer does not offer insurance and I even looked into insurance offered by the state to help displaced employees. That insurance was riddled with flaws. The state plan only covered 400 dollars per year in medication and cost 125 a month.

I looked into other things that were supposed to be made available for people in need and it really is not made for people who have any sort of health issues. To give you an example I had to get my second MMR shot for the university I am attending and the health department referred me to my regular doctor because I have a chronic illness. I used to get upset at what I had to pay, it is pointless. I just finally accepted what insurance is going to cost every month now and have tried to say up to have spare cash on hand to cover the difference the deductible will not cover.

[helpmeout]

Actually, it's both. Hospitals have always been concerned with their bottom line.

"Obamacare" didn't change that. So, no it's not both.

[Meatstick]

No thanks to Michael Moore, anyone can edit a documentary to support their skewered viewpoints.

Unless you have everyone, including deadbeats paying into the system a large percentage of people will continue to go without healthcare. We have millions who were born sucking on the government teet and you will never get them to even attempt to pay into the system.

I am fortunate that my employer has a very generous benefits package including great medical/dental insurance options. They have already acted on Obozocare and allowed everyone to add dependants 18-26 without regard to school enrollment. I am sure the cadillac tax will be just around the corner.

You can thank your local politicians for letting the private healthcare system run wild. You have lobbyists who have been greasing the wheels of both political parties and we all keep electing the same old farts. Time to clean house and get rid of them all. They have multiple plans to choose from and we are paying for them all and they turn right around and poo on all of us.

[MeLLE159]

You know you can't please everyone. The law was created to help those without insurance an those who have pre-exisitng conditions. I'm thankful to be healthy but Yes I have Insurance. I pray that all the people who despise the new health care law which I might add isn't called ObamaCare doesn't get diagnosed with a pre-existing condition when that part of the law goes into effect. That way they can't benefit from it.Hospitals are going to make money regardless! Have a nice day!

[andy158]

Do you have any evidence that this was caused by the health care bill? I'm not saying it's not, but how do you know it is?

True, the increase in my health care benefits may not be directly from Obamacare. How could anyone think for a minute that aggressive change in anything is not going to hit somebody's pocket somewhere and as the saying goes "S**t flows down hill". I think it is great that this country is finally following suit with the rest of the developed countries and changing this cluster bomb of insurance red tape. The insurance companies (lobbiests) are in bed with the government along with the oil companies, banks and wall street and are going to make gross profits whatever it takes. Highmark (my insurance carrier) is outsourcing hundreds of administrative and service jobs to India......duh! Same scenario with all big buisness. Put more people out of work for the sake of the bottom line! Read the entire article. It makes me want to puke!

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10226/1079996-28.stm

I was just pointing out that the middle class family will constantly be stimied by some form of increase in daily living expense. For the wealthy, increases like the ones we face are pocket change and have little effect on their daily living budgets. WE constantly have to adjust for any bump in the road.

[justbroke]

"Obamacare" didn't change that. So, no it's not both.

I suggest that everyone go read something or two. This play is no different than when the banks all scrambled to jack up interest rates on credit cards before legislation is enacted. If one would believe that Obamacare has no "cause and effect", then one would also believe that there is no "cause and effect" of a prediction of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, so the price of a barrel of crude oil on the futures market.

The health care bill -- not Obamacare -- understood that the prices would increase. They are hoping that over time, they'll come down as the uninsured get factored into the system. That's a known. To say otherwise is to just ignore the problem and isolate the rising costs to "just" normal course of business.

Ask any insurer how they "absorbed" the cost of covering "children" to age 26, with no pre-existing conditions... without raising costs.

I only ask people to do the math. If a person wants to believe that there is no cause and effect, then they have blinders on. We have serious problems in this country right now and are providing band-aid solutions. People hate me for saying it, but single-payer is the only way to really fix this problem. The private insurers STILL run the show. We have really solved nothing, but only increased costs.

[msm859]

Actually, a simple fix would have been to have a public option. Everyone should have the option to buy the exact same health insurance as Congress, at the exact same price. I guarantee they would then find a solution to the health care crisis.
As to those blaming "Obama", what solution would you offer instead?

[justbroke]

I like a public option, but I like single payer combined with it. Until you remove the profit-driven equation from the solution, it's still about profits. The new legislation tries to control profits, hoping that it will control costs, but it is not. Unfortunately there are a lot of other issues with controlling costs, including the cost of educating the highly skilled doctors ($250K in education on average). I just saw a Pharm.D program at a state school (not private) and it was over $40k/year for 3 years!

The only real solution is one that everyone is afraid of. That's state-controlled facilities, state-employed healthcare professionals, and a total absorption of all costs at the state/federal level. (I use "state" interchangeably to describe state or federal.) The major problem would be getting to this level. The downside may actually be the dreaded "death" panels... not that they don't already exist.

[chrisdfw]

And in 2014, if the mandate survives, the insurance companies will have millions of healthy young adults paying premiums. This should decrease premiums for everyone as the healthy pool increases. Of course they will not decrease premiums without government regulation. And there is little in the bill that limits premiums. The Republicans made sure that was the case, including that turncoat Joe Lieberman

Actually they probably won't have more young adults. The penalty for not having insurance is so low that it is cheaper to not buy insurance.

If you get sick, then buy insurance, they can't turn you down. Just buy it if and when you get sick.

The problem in this country is too much insurance, not too little. Compare the cost of plastic surgery where people pay out of pocket and shop around to the cost of a very routine procedure like an appendectomy. A tummy tuck is elective, complicated procedure and costs less because there is not insurance. A appedectomy costs more because there is no incentive to shop around.

Competition only works if people have incentives to shop and conserve and companies have incentives to innovate and conserve (we call those incentives profits). I find it ironic that big government people advocate a public option as a competitive force, that has never proved to be the case. What usually happens is the government is innefficient and simply transfers wealth from those that produce it to those that do not. In the process they destroy the incentive systems. Why be healthy when the government will take care of you and you will pay the same premiums as a healthy person? If healthy people paid less then you have an incentive to stay healthy.

I just don't think they government has any business taking tax money to provide private benefits (food stamps, welfare, section 8, social security, medicare, and now health insurance). It may be an unpopular view, but I don't want to pay for anyone elses healthcare, and I don't want anyone else to pay for mine. Where does it end? Will I be taxed to pay for your cable tv? lawn service? Viagra? abortion?

Our government is out of control large. Why? Because

"most men do not want to be free, they merely want a master that does not beat them" - I forget the author

[justbroke]

If you get sick, then buy insurance, they can't turn you down. Just buy it if and when you get sick.

That was exactly the problem that the health care reform act was supposed to solve. The real problem now surfaces when you don't have a single-payer or a state-sponsored system. The real problem is if people still don't buy insurance, and/or just buy it at the point that they become really ill.

I'm glad that there is one poster who has done their homework.

I just don't think they government has any business taking tax money to provide private benefits (food stamps, welfare, section 8, social security, medicare, and now health insurance).

Don't worry, some of the founding fathers had the same foresight. That was, that when you take from those willing to work and give to those who would not, the democracy would cease to exist.

[KeithDoxen]

The problem in this country is too much insurance, not too little. Compare the cost of plastic surgery where people pay out of pocket and shop around to the cost of a very routine procedure like an appendectomy. A tummy tuck is elective, complicated procedure and costs less because there is not insurance. A appedectomy costs more because there is no incentive to shop around.

The idea that anyone would "shop around" for the best deal on an appendectomy while they're hunched over in pain and don't even know what the heck is wrong with them is a bit much. This is not like buying a laptop. First of all, most health care knowledge is so concentrated within the medical community that folks have no idea what they even need to shop around for until they've been diagnosed, and even then they often have to choose between doing what the doctor recommends or dying.

That said, market incentives to lower the cost of ROUTINE care, preventative care, and the like works just fine. I should absolutely be given an incentive to shop around for a dentist to clean my teeth or a doc to give me a knee replacement. But the idea that someone is going to be doing research on the way to the hospital while they're in the middle of heart failure is simply not reality-based.

[KeithDoxen]

The only real solution is one that everyone is afraid of. That's state-controlled facilities, state-employed healthcare professionals, and a total absorption of all costs at the state/federal level. (I use "state" interchangeably to describe state or federal.) The major problem would be getting to this level. The downside may actually be the dreaded "death" panels... not that they don't already exist.

That is not the only real solution. That would destroy health care as we know it in America.

There are several reasonable solutions to the problems that we're having. One is to emulate the Netherlands, which has private medicine just like we do, and a mixture of public and private insurance companies. Everyone is required to have insurance and the insurance companies are highly regulated. ObamaCare actually gets us a lot closer to the Dutch system, which the Dutch seem to really like. The question is whether that kind of system is only working because the Dutch are a smaller, more homogenous population, without a lot of the problems that populations have when they are larger and more diverse like ours.

One idea that seems reasonable to me is to eliminate all employer based health insurance and give everyone catastrophic-only insurance, along with HSAs to pay for non-life-threatening medical procedures. The HSAs could be filled with pre-tax savings, or with a health voucher from the government for lower-income Americans who can't afford to save anything in their HSAs. This would give people an incentive to spend wisely and would bring down health care costs. Under this system, folks would still get their emergency care covered via insurance but routine care would essentially be paid for out of pocket. The only problem I can see with this is that folks with chronic conditions would use up their HSA funds very quickly and would end up unable to get the care they need. Perhaps we could supplement this system by letting really sick folks buy into Medicare.

[justbroke]

I should absolutely be given an incentive to shop around for a dentist to clean my teeth or a doc to give me a knee replacement.

Unfortunately, with private insurance, you really can't shop around. My CIGNA Dental DMO allows me to only go to my "assigned" doctor (of course I chose the doctor)... unless it's an emergency. Besides, there are standard "reasonable and customary" fees for all types of procedures and this is what the insurers pay -- regardless of what the doctor charges. I'm sure we all know that's the hidden secret.

The only people who pay actual costs for procedures, are those without insurance. I routinely see my doctor bill my insurer $170(+) for an office visit, and the insurer only gives them about $30. So, did the service really cost $170 or is it's value only $30? Even if the office started charging $30 and the insurer paid $30... that doesn't affect the "cost" of healthcare for the insured. It's already factored.

That is not the only real solution. That would destroy health care as we know it in America.

I know! I still don't have the answer short of a complete change in the healthcare industry that would turn it upside down. The fear is that it would have to be government (state-run) facilities with state-paid healthcare workers, but the States and federal government have shown no good track record on such things. Asking for a catastrophic-only system, which my employer provides for FREE, would lead to catastrophic healthcare decisions. Unless you implement some other components, such as state-run facilities.

Either way... we will get what we pay for.

[pris72]

Just wait until Jan 1, 2011.
Almost everyone that I know have already seen a very large increase in their ins. costs. Some are going to drop their coverage, because of these increases due to this "Obamacare" crap. The 1st changes for this Obamacare will start in Jan. I see what the goal is here. Cause our private ins. to go up so much, that we have no choice but to drop it. That in return will bankrupt private ins, and we'll all be forced into the exchange starting in 2014. IMO it is a back door way into socialized healthcare. Take it from me, someone with 2 pretty serious health issues. You do not want a single payer system. You do not want the hassle of sitting on waiting lists for 9 months for routine tests, that you can presently get within days. In Canada if you need to find a PCP or want to change PCP's the present wait is 2 1/2 yrs.
I talk to people from all over the world, many in countries with single payer systems. They envy me being in America with the way our present system runs. Right now as it stands our taxes are already paying for the uninsured. ANYONE can go into an ER and receive medical care and even emergency surgery if need be. A lady in England has a son in need of life saving medical treatment for his blood clots and cellulitis. He is on a waiting list. If he were here in America right now, that little boy would receive immediate care. This is only one example that I can give off the top of my head.